Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Why People Don't Like Evolution

Brian doesn't, can't comprehend where all this form comes from. Can't imagine that the form of Gloeotrichia, lichen, Coprinus is the product of arbitrary forces. (but they aren't arbitrary.)

That's what bothers them. Lichen ascocarp is obviously a work of art; composed, balanced, spiced with color, harmoniously functioning... And how can all that be a product of arbitrary evolution? It's got to be designed by a mind.

(But look here: how does a planet keep from flying off into space? Ain't some INTENTION got to be pulling it?

We are so full of our own story of consciously willed acts. And this is a fairy tale all of us self puffed up baby Gautama Buddhas tell ourselves. We want to think that human mind is the only source of creation in this universe.

So why do we want everything beautiful, structured to come from the human mind? Are we so bent on a myth that human mind is alien to this world that it ought not be tainted by mud, wet pussy, mosquitoes and decaying flesh of a grandmother? This is the impetus to fight a theory of evolution, we want our souls to be immortal and evolution is a story of the cycling through death. Creation out of death.

Miraculous coming together of pattern and then eventual dissolution of pattern is the way of the universe unless the patterns are simple tautological developments of physical law.

So why can't an intricately carved and behaving Stentor be the product of mud and random forces? Look, not many people have the slightest clue as to the immense hierarchical complexity of the city of molecules that makes a Stentor behave.

To say a Stentor is the activity of molecules is to say nothing to the average man on the street. They just have no training in the levels of complexity involved. Even after a few years of biology in college!!!

Why not? Don't people stop to think how a language functions, a nation functions, forest functions? But not necessarily with the agenda of looking for interacting parts!

M. Scott Peck says life is hard, life is complex. Too know this, to act upon this knowledge is to become as God. To act in this way is to act with a great burden of responsibility. Most of us shy from it.

To take the time to learn how a theory of evolution by natural selection on molecular driven metabolism and structure can create life is to do a lot of hard work and once this hard-won knowledge is won, you got the opportunity to be responsible for creation yourself. You realize that you might actually be able to create life, redesign life. We fear this.

Are you serious Bar? That's the fear? Sure, if you leave stentor, human mind, the ability for such to be created in the FUZZY realm of a Michelangelo in the sky to paint with some brush strokes you aren't really taking responsibility for understanding how this creation works. You are not SERIOUSLY asking how it's possible!

Look, if you subscribe to the story that some mind created - poof - Stentor AND directs its steps, you are living in delusion. You short-circuit the need to understand, the possibility of understanding, even the DESIRE TO LOOK AT THE COMPLEXITY YOU WISH TO REMAIN IGNORANT ABOUT.

That story keeps you from doing the hard work of experiments in physics, chemistry to learn how parts can make wholes over many levels of complexity. Years of leaning and doodling that takes to hold in your mind an image of the humongous circus that is a Stentor on the molecular level.

Only after you have accepted this task of learning are you even eligible for the right to decide whether Stentor is cooperative mechanics or mind of God.

Of course just the act of saying, "mind of God" throws out the whole question of structure. Even throws out any questioning at all. So, yes, denying outright a theory of evolution, in most people is probably just shear laziness!

And in the Practical realm? Obviously! People listen to topical events and personalities on the NEWS every evening but to act on that information as a citizen in a polity requires wending the complex paths of human, economic... interactions and understanding how complex interactions of parts works.

As I stated in MONSTERS, people want to take the easy way out and instantiate horror in a monster, beauty in a god, instead of thread through what is in reality the complex set of interactions required to understand how the horror comes about. I.e. how tanglingly complex the damm structure was that makes it look like horror as it comes apart! Easy way out is to invent a simple monster instead and kill it. But that doesn't heal. Healing requires patience and untangling.